A Study On Customer Perceived Value In The Internet Channel

The great influence of loyalty on companies' profits has been widely proved in theoryand practice, so it is a popular research branch to detect the factors driving the customerloyalty. Fruitful results have been achieved on factors influencing loyalty in traditionalenvironment, however, whether these results are still applied to the new arising onlineenvironment, and whether there are some new factors in online environment are still neededto be detected in research. The research on factors influencing consumers' loyalty in onlinechannels is just at beginning both in China and abroad, and these limited studies on thisquestion are based on different theories, and have found some factors influencing consumer'sloyalty. However, since these conclusions are mostly arrived from certain single perspective,they are still needed to be further detected.This thesis focuses on answering the question of how to build customers' loyalty in thenew arising online retailing industry of China. Based on the thoroughly literature review ofresearch in this field, the viewpoint of building consumer loyalty of online channels throughvalue-based orientation is put forward. In order to make the research more precise,comprehensive and innovative, three stages of research work are conducted surrounding thecore concept of customer perceived value of online channels.First, on the basis of literature review, I synthesize those researchers' opinions, anddefine consumer perceived value of online channels as consumer's preference and evaluationof using the online channels to achieve their consuming goals and intention. Meanwhile,based on attitude theory of psychology, TAM model of information system, and the methodsof mean-end chains of consumer research, I further specify three kinds of perceived value:outcome value, procedure value and emotion value, and develop a reliable and valid scale byempirical research.Second, this thesis further uses the concept I have defined and the scale I have developedabove to the study of customer loyalty of online channels, and use three kinds of perceivedvalue as the antecedent variables and two core concepts of relationship quality, satisfactionand trust, as the mediator factors to build and test a consumer driven model of onlinechannels' loyalty. Results show that perceived value is the most important antecedent factorsof consumer loyalty of online channels. In addition, the study in this stage also proves theimportance of relationship marketing in online business. By building and advancing therelationship to consumers, online companies can increase their consumer perceived value, andthen further increase customers' loyalty. In the same time, the results also approve Singh andSirdeshmukh's model of post-purchase satisfaction→post-purchase trust→loyalty (Singh and Sirdeshmukh, 2000), and provide an answer about the question of causal-effect relationbetween satisfaction and trust on online channels.Finally, in order to make the results more comprehensive in theory and practice, the laststage focuses on detecting the difference of the antecedents of perceived value amongdifferent types of consumers. To grasp both sides of return and lost, the study separates returninto seven dimensions and used perceived risk of online channels to represent lost for the firsttime. Through these analyses, a model integrated of different types of consumers' perceivedvalue, product perceived quality and transaction cost of online channels is built and tested.Results show that for outcome value of online channels, direct antecedents of the returnaspect include product perceived quality, information service quality, connection andcommunication service quality, and individuation service quality, and the direct antecedentsof the lost aspect include transaction cost and perceived risk. For procedure value of onlinechannels, the direct antecedents of return aspect include reliability, individuation, connectionand communication, information, design and function of service quality, and antecedents oflost aspect only include transaction cost, and the influence of perceived risk is not significant.For emotion value of online channels, the direct antecedents of return aspect includeindividuation, design and function, reliability, connection and communication, informationand safe and security, and the influence of product perceived value is not significant. Thedirect antecedents of lost only include transaction cost, and the influence of perceived risk isnot significant.The contribution of this thesis mainly concentrates on the following three aspects. (1)Based on attitude theory of psychology, TAM model of information system, and the methodsof mean-end chains of consumer research, I specify three kinds of perceived value: outcomevalue, procedure value and emotion value, and develop a reliable and valid measurement scaleaccording to Chinese online consumer samples. (2) By introducing outcome value, procedurevalue and emotion value into the research of antecedents of customer loyalty of onlinechannels, I build and test the consumer driven model of online consumer loyalty in whichthree kinds of perceived value and the two kinds of core concepts of relationship quality,satisfaction and trust respectively, are included. (3) I detect the relationship between the sevendimensions of service perceived quality, product perceived quality, transaction cost andperceived risk and the three dimensions of perceived value of online channels, and find theantecedents of each dimension of perceived value.